Criticism of DSM-5 proposals for grief in this week’s Lancet: Editorial and Essay

Criticism of DSM-5 proposals for grief in this week’s Lancet: Editorial and Essay

Post #143 Shortlink: http://wp.me/pKrrB-1Um

Update:

Christopher Lane Ph.D. has blogged at Side Effects at Psychology Today

Side Effects
From quirky to serious, trends in psychology and psychiatry.
by Christopher Lane, Ph.D.

Good Grief: The APA Plans to Give the Bereaved Two Weeks to Conclude Their Mourning

Britain’s “Lancet” calls the proposal “dangerously simplistic and flawed.”

Published on February 17, 2012 by Christopher Lane, Ph.D. in Side Effects

Allan Frances, MD, former chair of DSM-IV Task Force has blogged in DSM5 in Distress at Psychology Today

DSM5 in Distress
The DSM’s impact on mental health practice and research.
by Allen Frances, M.D.

Lancet Rejects Grief As a Mental Disorder

Will DSM 5 Finally Drop This Terrible Idea

Published on February 17, 2012 by Allen J. Frances, M.D. in DSM5 in Distress

 

This week in the Lancet

The lead Editorial in this week’s Lancet expresses concerns about specific proposals for the next edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

The misclassification of grief as a mental illness

An Editorial expresses concerns about the forthcoming fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). While previous editions of DSM have highlighted the need to consider, and usually exclude, bereavement before diagnosis of a major depressive disorder, the current draft of this fifth edition fails to do that. In this week’s The Art of Medicine Arthur Kleinma reflects on his own personal experiences of grief and continues the discussion on the classification of grief as a mental illness. Finally, a Comment asks if attenuated psychosis syndrome should be included in DSM-5.

Lancet Editorial: Grief is not an illness and should not be routinely treated with antidepressants (Full text)

The Lancet, Volume 379, Issue 9816, Page 589, 18 February 2012 doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(12)60248-7 
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(12)60248-7/fulltext

Also includes reference to ICD-11:

“WHO’s International Classification of Diseases, currently under revision as ICD-11, is debating a proposal to include “prolonged grief disorder”, but it will be another 18 months before that definition will be clear.” Editorial, The Lancet, Page 589, 18 February 2012

Essay: Culture, bereavement, and psychiatry (Full text)

The Lancet, Volume 379, Issue 9816, Pages 608 – 609, 18 February 2012 doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(12)60258-X
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(12)60258-X/fulltext

Comment: Should attenuated psychosis syndrome be included in DSM-5? (Subscription or payment required)

The Lancet, Volume 379, Issue 9816, Pages 591 – 592, 18 February 2012 doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(11)61507-9
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(11)61507-9/fulltext

Previous Lancet article on DSM-5

The first flight of DSM-5 | Niall Boyce

The Lancet, Volume 377, Issue 9780, Pages 1816 – 1817, 28 May 2011 doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(11)60743-5

HHS Secretary Sebelius announces intent to delay ICD-10-CM compliance date

HHS Secretary Sebelius announces intent to delay ICD-10-CM compliance date

Post #142 Shortlink: http://wp.me/pKrrB-1Ux

Coverage today of the announcement by Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen G. Sebelius of intent to delay ICD-10-CM compliance date.

Will American Psychiatric Association Board of Trustees take this opportunity to delay its DSM-5 timeline, take a breathing space, and reconsider its controversial proposals for DSM-5, or submit them to independent scientific scrutiny?

Link to report at end of post also quotes Chris Chute, Chair, ICD-11 Revision Steering Group, on possible delay for completion of ICD-11 from 2015 to 2016 – no surprise that ICD Revision may be considering another shift of timeline given the technical ambitiousness of the revision project, the lack of resources and slipping targets for the Alpha and Beta drafts.

Tom Sullivan reports:

Should the U.S. delay the ICD-10 compliance deadline just one year, until 2014, then the WHO will have a beta of ICD-11 ready. And if Sisko’s gut is correct, and the new ICD-10 deadline flows into 2015, well, then a final version of ICD-11 will be fast-approaching.

When it arrives, currently slated for 2015 (but Chute said it could be 2016), the underlying structure of ICD-11 will be profoundly different than any anterior ICD.

“ICD-11 will be significantly more sophisticated, both from a computer science perspective and from a medical content and description perspective,” Chute explains. “Each rubric in ICD-11 will have a fairly rich information space and metadata around it. It will have an English language definition, it will have logical linkages with attributes to SNOMED, it will have applicable genomic information and underpinnings linked to HUGO, human genome standard representations.”

ICD-10, as a point of contrast, provides a title, a string, a number, inclusion terms and an index. No definitions. No linkages because it was created before the Internet, let alone the semantic web. No rich information space.”

 

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announces intent to delay ICD-10 compliance date

February 16, 2012 | Carl Natale, Editor, ICD10Watch

Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen G. Sebelius confirmed Wednesday that they will change the ICD-10 timeline.

A HHS press release stated they “will initiate the rulemaking process to postpone the date by which certain health care entities have to comply with International Classification of Diseases, 10th Edition diagnosis and procedure codes (ICD-10).”

On Tuesday, Marilyn Tavenner, the acting administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), said the agency will examine the ICD-10-CM/PCS timeline. Tavenner made the statement at a conference of the American Medical Association (AMA) National Advocacy Conference. The AMA has declared vigorous opposition to the medical coding system citing the cost, complexity and lack of perceived benefit to patients… Read on

 

CMS Public Affairs Press Release:

http://www.dhhs.gov/news/press/2012pres/02/20120216a.html

News Release
Contact: CMS Public Affairs
(202) 690-6145

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 16, 2012

HHS announces intent to delay ICD-10 compliance date

As part of President Obama’s commitment to reducing regulatory burden, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen G. Sebelius today announced that HHS will initiate a process to postpone the date by which certain health care entities have to comply with International Classification of Diseases, 10th Edition diagnosis and procedure codes (ICD-10).

The final rule adopting ICD-10 as a standard was published in January 2009 and set a compliance date of October 1, 2013 – a delay of two years from the compliance date initially specified in the 2008 proposed rule. HHS will announce a new compliance date moving forward.

“ICD-10 codes are important to many positive improvements in our health care system,” said HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. “We have heard from many in the provider community who have concerns about the administrative burdens they face in the years ahead. We are committing to work with the provider community to reexamine the pace at which HHS and the nation implement these important improvements to our health care system.”

ICD-10 codes provide more robust and specific data that will help improve patient care and enable the exchange of our health care data with that of the rest of the world that has long been using ICD-10. Entities covered under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) will be required to use the ICD-10 diagnostic and procedure codes.

Report:

http://www.healthcarefinancenews.com/news/could-us-skip-icd-10-and-leapfrog-directly-icd-11

Could the U.S skip ICD-10 and leapfrog directly to ICD-11?

February 16, 2012 | Tom Sullivan, Government Health IT

Practice Central on ICD-10-CM transition; APA Monitor and WHO Reed on ICD-11

Two articles on forthcoming classification systems: the first on ICD-10-CM from Practice Central; the second on ICD-11 from the February 2012 edition of the American Psychological Association’s “Monitor on Psychology”

Post #140 Shortlink: http://wp.me/pKrrB-1Tt

Update: Medicare could delay burdensome rules on doctors | Julian Pecquet, for The Hill, February 14, 2012

“The acting head of the Medicare agency said Tuesday that she is considering giving the nation’s doctors more time to switch to a new insurance coding system that critics say would cost millions of dollars for little gain to patients.

“Marilyn Tavenner, the acting administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, told a conference of the American Medical Association (AMA) that her agency could delay adoption of the so-called ICD-10 system. Current law calls for physicians to adopt the new codes next year…

“…Speaking to reporters after her prepared remarks, Tavenner said her office would formally announce its intention to craft new regulations “within the next few days.”

ICD-10 Deadline Review Update | Andrea Kraynak, for HealthLeaders Media, February 15, 2012

“Big news regarding the ICD-10-CM/PCS implementation timeline came Tuesday morning during the American Medical Association (AMA) National Advocacy Conference in Washington, DC.”

“Per CMS acting administrator Marilyn Tavenner, CMS plans to revisit the current implementation deadline of October 1, 2013. Tavenner said CMS wants to reexamine the pace of implementing ICD-10 and reduce physicians’ administrative burden, according to an AMA tweet…”

Practice Central: Resources for Practicing Psychologists

Practice Central, a service of the APA Practice Organization (APAPO), supports practicing psychologists in all settings and at all stages of their career. APAPO is a companion organization to the American Psychological Association. Our mission is to advance and protect your ability to practice psychology.

http://www.apapracticecentral.org/update/2012/02-09/transition.aspx

Practice Update | February 2012

Transition to the ICD-10-CM: What does it mean for psychologists?

Psychologists should be aware of and prepare for the mandatory shift to ICD-10-CM diagnosis codes in October 2013

By Practice Research and Policy staff

February 9, 2012—Beginning October 1, 2013 all entities, including health care providers, covered by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) must convert to using the ICD-10-CM diagnosis code sets. The mandate represents a fundamental shift for many psychologists and other mental health professionals who are far more attuned to the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).

Most psychologists were trained using some version of DSM. For other health care providers, the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD) – which contains a chapter on mental disorders – is the classification standard.

Over the years, efforts to harmonize these two classifications have resulted in systems with similar (often identical) codes and diagnostic names. In fact, even if psychologists record DSM diagnostic codes for billing purposes, payers recognize the codes as ICD-9-CM – the official version of ICD currently used in the United States. Since 2003, the ICD-9-CM diagnostic codes have been mandated for third-party billing and reporting by HIPAA for all…

Read full article here

 

Dr Geoffrey M. Reed, PhD, Senior Project Officer, WHO Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse, is seconded to WHO through IUPsyS (International Union for Psychological Science). Dr Reed co-ordinates the International Advisory Group for the Revision of ICD-10 Mental and Behavioural Disorders.

Meetings of the International Advisory Group are chaired by Steven Hyman, MD, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, a former Director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and DSM-5 Task Force Member.

The Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse will also be managing the technical part of the revision of Diseases of the Nervous System (currently Chapter VI), as it is doing for Chapter V.

February 2012 edition of the American Psychological Association’s “Monitor on Psychology”:

http://www.apa.org/monitor/2012/02/disorder-classification.aspx

Feature

Improving disorder classification, worldwide

With the help of psychologists, the next version of the International Classification of Diseases will have a more behavioral perspective.

By Rebecca A. Clay

February 2012, Vol 43, No. 2

Print version: page 40

What’s the world’s most widely used classification system for mental disorders? If you guessed the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), you would be wrong.

According to a study of nearly 5,000 psychiatrists in 44 countries sponsored by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Psychiatric Association, more than 70 percent of the world’s psychiatrists use WHO’s International Classification of Diseases (ICD) most in day-to-day practice while just 23 percent turn to the DSM. The same pattern is found among psychologists globally, according to preliminary results from a similar survey of international psychologists conducted by WHO and the International Union of Psychological Science.

“The ICD is the global standard for health information,” says psychologist Geoffrey M. Reed, PhD, senior project officer in WHO’s Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse. “It’s developed as a tool for the public good; it’s not the property of a particular profession or particular professional organization.”

Now WHO is revising the ICD, with the ICD-11 due to be approved in 2015. With unprecedented input from psychologists, the revised version’s section on mental and behavioral disorders is expected to be more psychologist-friendly than ever—something that’s especially welcome given concerns being raised about the DSM’s own ongoing revision process. (See “Protesting proposed changes to the DSM” .) And coming changes in the United States will mean that psychologists will soon need to get as familiar with the ICD as their colleagues around the world…

Read full article here

For more information about the ICD revision, visit the World Health Organization.

Rebecca A. Clay is a writer in Washington, D.C

ICD-11 Beta drafting platform for release in May 2012

ICD-11 Beta drafting platform for release in May 2012

Post #139 Shortlink: http://wp.me/pKrrB-1SE

ICD-11 Beta drafting platform

ICD Revision on Facebook has announced that a ‎4th Face to Face meeting of the ICD Revision Topic Advisory Group for Internal Medicine (TAG IM) was held recently, in Tokyo.

No agenda, meeting materials or documents have been posted on the ICD-11 Revision Google site but a PowerPoint presentation prepared by WHO’s, Dr Bedirhan Üstün, is viewable here on the “Slideshare” platform.

Dr Bedirhan Üstün is Coordinator, Classifications, Terminology and Standards, Department of Health Statistics and Information, WHO, Geneva.

You won’t need a PowerPoint .pptx format viewer to view this presentation on the Slideshare site, but you will need a .pptx viewer if you want to download and view the file. (A free .pptx viewer can be downloaded for free from the Microsoft site.)

In order to download the file, you will first need to register with Slideshare or use a Facebook membership as Sign in. If you do agree to download through a Facebook membership, please read and digest the T & C before you agree to Slideshare accessing your Facebook profile data.

View the presentation here:

http://www.slideshare.net/ustunb/tokyo-2012-ustun-show

Tokyo 2012 ustun (show) by Bedirhan Ustun on Feb 10, 2012

for which it states:

“WHO is revising the ICD to be completed by 2015. It is going to enter into a Beta phase by 2012 May during which all stakeholders could see and comment on the ICD as well as propose changes, test in practice.”

Slide #7 states:

2011  : Alpha version (ICD 11 alpha draft)

– + 1 YR  : Commentaries and consultations

2012  : Beta version & Field Trials Version

– + 2 YR Field Trials

2014   : Final version for public viewing

– 2015  : WHA Approval

2015+  implementation

Slides #11 and #12, set out the thirteen parameters of the ICD-11 “Content Model”.

 

The “Content Model”

ICD Revision says that the most important difference between ICD-10 and ICD-11 will be the Content Model.

Content in ICD-11 will be populated in accordance with the ICD-11 Content Model Reference Guide. There is the potential for considerably more content to be included for diseases, disorders and syndromes in ICD-11 than appears in ICD-10, across all chapters:

“Population of the Content Model and the subsequent review process will serve as the foundation for the creation of the ICD-11. The Content Model identifies the basic characteristics needed to define any ICD category through use of multiple parameters (e.g. Body Systems, Body Parts, Signs and Symptoms, Diagnostic Findings, Causal Agents, Mechanisms, Temporal Patterns, Severity, Functional Impact, Treatment interventions, Diagnostic Rules).”

This is the most recent available version of the Content Model Reference Guide January 2011

This iCAT Glossary page gives an overview of the 13 Content Model parameters.

See also Post #62: ICD-11 Content Model Reference Guide: version for December 2010

 

New Beta drafting browser

In May 2011, a publicly viewable ICD-11 Alpha Browser platform was launched.

In July 2011, this platform was opened up to professionals and other interested stakeholders who can register via the site for fuller access and for reading and submitting comments. See the ICD-11 Alpha Browser User Guide for information on how the Browser functions and how to register for increased access. (This is the Alpha/Beta “hybrid” referred to in the WHO-FIC Council conference call report, February 16, 2011: Page 6: PDF for Report)

ICD-11 Revision and Topic Advisory Groups are continuing to use a separate platform for drafting purposes.

Stakeholder participation at the Beta stage

In preparation for the Beta drafting stage, another publicly viewable platform is being developed. According to ICD Revision presentations, this platform will invite and support a higher level of professional and public interaction with the drafting process, with various levels of input and editing authority for interested stakeholders who register for participation. According to editing status, registered stakeholders would be permitted to:

Make comments
Make proposals to change ICD categories
Participate in field trials
Assist in translating

See presentation slides in Dx Revision Watch Posts #70 and #71:

ICD Revision Process Alpha Evaluation Meeting 11 – 14 April 2011: The Way Forward?

ICD Revision Process Alpha Evaluation Meeting documents and PowerPoint slide presentations

 

Slides #15 and #16 of Dr Üstün’s presentation show the methods via which interested stakeholders will be able to register for interaction with the platform.

I will update when more information becomes available on the launch of the Beta platform.

APA “Monitor” articles: ICD-11 and DSM-5; Frances, Rajiv Tandon on DSM-5; iCAT Analytics

1] ICD-11 (with contributions from WHO’s Dr Geoffery Reed) and DSM-5 articles in February edition of American Psychological Association’s “Monitor”

2] Academic article on DSM-5 by Rajiv Tandon, MD, Professor of Psychiatry, University of Florida

3] Allen Frances (who chaired the DSM-IV Task Force), Suzy Chapman and Dr Dayle Jones on DSM-5

4] Paper: Pragmatic Analysis of Crowd-Based Knowledge Production Systems with iCAT Analytics: Visualizing Changes to the ICD-11 Ontology

 

Post #137 Shortlink: http://wp.me/pKrrB-1QW

1] Two articles in the February edition of the American Psychological Association’s “Monitor”:

American Psychological Association

Monitor

Feature, February 2012, Vol 43, No. 2

Improving disorder classification, worldwide

Rebecca A. Clay  |  February 2012

With the help of psychologists, the next version of the International Classification of Diseases will have a more behavioral perspective.

Print version: page 40

What’s the world’s most widely used classification system for mental disorders? If you guessed the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), you would be wrong.

According to a study of nearly 5,000 psychiatrists in 44 countries sponsored by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Psychiatric Association, more than 70 percent of the world’s psychiatrists use WHO’s International Classification of Diseases (ICD) most in day-to-day practice while just 23 percent turn to the DSM. The same pattern is found among psychologists globally, according to preliminary results from a similar survey of international psychologists conducted by WHO and the International Union of Psychological Science.

“The ICD is the global standard for health information,” says psychologist Geoffrey M. Reed, PhD, senior project officer in WHO’s Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse. “It’s developed as a tool for the public good; it’s not the property of a particular profession or particular professional organization.”

Now WHO is revising the ICD, with the ICD-11 due to be approved in 2015. With unprecedented input from psychologists, the revised version’s section on mental and behavioral disorders is expected to be more psychologist-friendly than ever—something that’s especially welcome given concerns being raised about the DSM’s own ongoing revision process. (See “Protesting proposed changes to the DSM”.) And coming changes in the United States will mean that psychologists will soon need to get as familiar with the ICD as their colleagues around the world…

…”Since the rest of the world will be adopting the ICD-11 when it is released in 2015, the CDC will likely make annual updates to gradually bring the ICD-10-CM into line with the ICD-11 to avoid another abrupt shift. But the differences between the DSM and the ICD may grow even greater over time, says Reed, depending on the outcomes of the ICD and DSM revision processes.”

For more information about the ICD revision, visit the World Health Organization.

Rebecca A. Clay is a writer in Washington, D.C.

Read full article here

American Psychological Association

Monitor

February 2012, Vol 43, No. 2

Print version: page 42

Protesting proposed changes to the DSM

When President David N. Elkins, PhD, and two colleagues within APA’s Div. 32 (Society for Humanistic Psychology) heard about the proposed revisions to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), they were alarmed. But what could three people do?

Plenty, as it turns out.

Although their original aim was simply to educate the division’s members, Elkins, Secretary Brent Dean Robbins, PhD, and student representative Sara R. Kamens soon decided to share their concerns in an open letter to the American Psychiatric Association. Thinking it would pack more punch with a few more signatures, they posted it online last October.

The response astounded them. “Within two days, we had more than 1,500 signatures,” says Elkins. So far, more than 10,000 individuals and 40 mental health organizations have signed on, and media outlets as diverse as Nature, USA Today and Forbes have covered the controversy. APA, which has no official position on the controversy, urges its members to get involved in the debate (see APA’s statement in the January Monitor, page 10).

The open letter outlines three major concerns with the proposed draft of the DSM-5, set for publication in 2013…

Read full article here

2] Article by Rajiv Tandon, MD, Professor of Psychiatry, University of Florida:

Current Psychiatry

Vol. 11, No. 02 / February 2012

Getting ready for DSM-5: Part 1

The process, challenges, and status of constructing the next diagnostic manual

Rajiv Tandon, MD  |  February 2012
Professor of Psychiatry, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL

Discuss this article at www.facebook.com/CurrentPsychiatry

Work on the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5)—scheduled to be published in May 2013—has been ongoing for more than a decade. Momentous advances in genetics and brain imaging since publication of DSM-IV in 1994 have generated optimism that an improved understanding of the neurobiologic underpinnings of psychiatric disorders might lead to a paradigm shift from the current descriptive classification system to a more scientific etiopathophysiological system similar to that used by other medical specialities.1

Some fear that any changes to our current classification system may be premature and could make an already complex system even more unwieldy.2 Scores of articles about the content and process of DSM-5 and several critiques and commentaries on the topic have been published. The American Psychiatric Association (APA) has made the DSM-5 process transparent by posting frequent updates to the DSM-5 Development Web site (www.dsm5.org), seeking feedback from the psychiatric community and the public, and presenting progress reports by members of the DSM-5 Task Force at scientific meetings.

There have been few discussions on the implications of DSM-5 from the practicing clinician’s vantage point, which I seek to present in this series of articles, the remainder of which will be published here, at CurrentPsychiatry.com…

Read on here

 

3] Allen Frances, MD, in Psychology Today and Psychiatric Times

Registration required for access to article on Psychiatric Times

DSM5 in Distress

PTSD, DSM 5, and Forensic Misuse
DSM 5 would lead to overdiagnosis in legal cases.

Allen Frances, MD | February 9, 2012

————————————————————

Documentation That DSM-5 Publication Must Be Delayed
because DSM 5 is so far behind schedule

Allen Frances, MD | February 7, 2012

Allen Frances, MD, who chaired the Task Force that had oversight of the development of DSM-IV, is a former chief of psychiatry at Duke University Medical Center and currently professor emeritus at Duke

Last week, I wrote that DSM-5 is so far behind schedule it can’t possibly produce a usable document in time for its planned publication date in May 2013.¹ My blog stimulated 2 interesting responses that illustrate the stark contrast between DSM-5 fantasy and DSM-5 reality. Together they document why publication must be delayed if DSM-5 is to be set right. The first email came from Suzy Chapman of Dx Revision Watch https://dxrevisionwatch.wordpress.com

Re DSM-5 delays, here is a telling statement made by Dr Darrel Regier, its Vice Chair, on March 9, 2010: “We have just released draft criteria on a website on February 10th at dsm5.org. And we’ll be having a field trial starting in July of this year. We’ll then have another revision based on field trial results going into a second revision or second field trial in July of 2011. As a result, we will not have our final recommendations for the DSM-V probably until early 2011.”  She continues,

Please note the dates. Dr Regier’s promised timetable has been missed by more than a year—we still don’t have final recommendations.

Dayle Jones, PhD, is head of the Task Force of the American Counseling Association that monitors DSM-5. She sent in a timeline comparing DSM-5 promised deadlines with actual delivery dates:

The DSM-5 academic/large clinic field trials were designed to have two phases. Phase 1 was first scheduled to begin in June 2009, but had to be postponed for a year because the criteria sets were not ready. The timetable for field trial completion was unrealistic from the start and not surprisingly the end dates have been repeatedly postponed from early 2010 to early 2011, and we’re now already into 2012 with no end in sight. Phase 2, originally scheduled for September 2011 to February 2012, was to re-test those diagnoses that did poorly in Phase 1 and had to be revised. The phase 2 trials were quietly canceled. We still don’t have results from the phase 1 field trials, but the APA leadership has warned us that we must accept reliabilities that are barely better than chance. Without the second stage, uncorrected problem diagnoses will be included in DSM-5.

The separate clinician field trial has been an even worse disaster. Clinicians were originally scheduled to be trained by August 2010, enrolling patients no later than late November 2010, and ending by February, 2011. Training was finally completed 18 months late in December 2011, which means the earliest these trials could possibly end is June 2012—well after most DSM-5 final decisions will have been made. Furthermore, of the over 5000 clinicians who registered to participate, only 70 (1.4%) have begun enrolling patients for the field trial. My guess is that like academic/large clinic Phase 2 field trial, poor planning and disorganization will force cancellation.

Dr Jones concludes,

In my opinion, there is no process and not enough time left to ensure that DSM-5 will attain high enough quality to be used by counselors. Fortunately, we can always bypass it by using ICD-10-CM.

Sobering stuff. Its constant procrastination has at last caught up with DSM-5. Having fallen so far behind schedule, DSM-5 abruptly dropped the second stage of field-testing—without public comment or justification or discussion of what would be the effects on quality and reliability. In fact, the second stage of the field trials was perhaps the most crucial step in the entire DSM-5 process—a last chance for sorely needed quality control to bring a lagging DSM-5 up to acceptable standards. The DSM-5 proposals that were weak performers in the first stage were supposed to be rewritten and retested in the second to ensure that they deserved to be included in the manual.

The American Psychiatric Association (APA) is now stuck with the most unpalatable of choices—protecting the quality of DSM-5 versus protecting the publishing profits to be gained by premature publication. Given all the delays, it can’t possibly do both—a quality DSM-5 cannot be delivered in May 2013.

All along, it was predictable (and predicted), that DSM-5 disorganization would lead to a mad, careless dash at the end. The DSM’s have become far too important to be done in this slapdash way—the high cost to users and the public of this rush to print is unacceptable. Unless publication is delayed, APA will be offering us official DSM-5 criteria that are poorly written, inadequately tested, and of low reliability. The proper alternative is clear: APA should delay publication of DSM-5 until it can get the job done right. Public trust should always trump publishing profits.

Let’s close with a worrying and all too illustrative quote from Dr Regier, just posted by Scientific American.² When asked if revisions to criteria in DSM-5 could be completed by the end of this year, he said “there is plenty of time.” I beg to differ—there is not nearly enough time if the changes are to be done based on a much needed independent scientific review and are to be tested adequately in Phase 2 of the field trial. Without these necessary steps DSM-5 will be flying blind toward the land of unintended consequences.

References
1. Frances A. APA should delay publication of DSM-5. January 31, 2012. Psychiatr Times.
http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/blog/frances/content/article/10168/2024394

2. Jabr F. Redefining autism: will new DSM-5 Criteria for ASD exclude some people? January 30, 2012. Sci Am. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=autism-new-criteria  Accessed February 7, 2012.

 

4] Paper: Pragmatic Analysis of Crowd-Based Knowledge Production Systems with iCAT Analytics: Visualizing Changes to the ICD-11 Ontology

     Pragmatic Analysis – iCAT Analytics 2012

Pragmatic Analysis of Crowd-Based Knowledge Production Systems with iCAT Analytics: Visualizing Changes to the ICD-11 Ontology

http://kmi.tugraz.at/staff/markus/documents/2012_AAAI_iCATAnalytics.pdf

Jan P¨oschko and Markus Strohmaier, Knowledge Management Institute, Graz University of Technology, Inffeldgasse 21a/II, 8010 Graz, Austria

Tania Tudorache and Natalya F. Noy and Mark A. Musen, Stanford Center for Biomedical Informatics Research, 1265 Welch Road, Stanford, CA 94305-5479, USA

Abstract

While in the past taxonomic and ontological knowledge was traditionally produced by small groups of co-located experts, today the production of such knowledge has a radically different shape and form. For example, potentially thousands of health professionals, scientists, and ontology experts will collaboratively construct, evaluate and  maintain the most recent version of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11), a large ontology of diseases and causes of deaths managed by the World Health Organization. In this work, we present a novel web-based tool-iCAT Analytics-that allows to investigate systematically crowd-based processes in knowledge-production systems. To enable such investigation, the tool supports interactive exploration of pragmatic aspects of ontology engineering such as how a given ontology evolved and the nature of changes, discussions and interactions that took place during its production process. While iCAT Analytics was motivated by ICD-11, it could potentially be applied to any crowd-based ontology-engineering project. We give an introduction to the features of iCAT Analytics and present some insights specifically for ICD-11.

American Psychiatric Association rejects call for independent review of DSM-5 proposals

American Psychiatric Association rejects psychologists’ call for independent review of controversial DSM-5 proposals

Post #135 Shortlink: http://wp.me/pKrrB-1KF

On January 9, 2012, the Coalition for DSM-5 Reform, an ad hoc committee of the Society for Humanistic Psychology (Division 32 of the American Psychological Association), sent another call to the American Psychiatric Association’s Board of Trustees and DSM-5 Task Force to submit controversial proposals for DSM-5 to independent scrutiny.

American Psychiatric Association president, John Oldham, M.D., issued a response last Friday, January 27.

“…There is in fact no outside organization that has the capacity to replicate the range of expertise that DSM-5 has assembled over the past decade to review diagnostic criteria for mental disorders. In addition, the posting of the criteria on the www.dsm5.org Web site for an international review; the ongoing consultation and coordination with the WHO Mental Disorder Advisory Group for ICD-11; and the several internal reviews provided by the Scientific Review Committee, a Clinical and Public Health Committee review, and the Task Force as a whole, collectively provide the most far reaching review ever undertaken for any DSM revision…”   

                        John Oldham M.D. President, on behalf of American Psychiatric Association

For a copy of the Coalition’s letter see Post #126: Psychologists call for independent review of DSM-5    

Full response from John Oldham, M.D., on behalf of the American Psychiatric Association, here:

      APA Response on 01.27.12 to Coalition for DSM-5 Reform letter of 01.09.12

 

Text

American Psychiatric Association

1000 Wilson Boulevard
Suite 1825
Arlington, VA 22209
Telephone 703.907.7300
Fax 703.907.1085
Email apa@psych.org
Internet www.psych.org

David N. Elkins, Ph.D.
President
Society for Humanistic Psychology
750 First Street, N.E.
Washington, DC 20002Ͳ4242

January 27, 2012

Dear President Elkins:

We appreciate the January 9, 2012, open letter from you and the members of the Division 32 Open Letter Committee to the American Psychiatric Association and developers of DSM-5 regarding the need for a more thorough external review process in revising the manual.

We echo your desire to ensure that “the proposed DSM-5 is safe and credible.” To that end, the DSM-5 Task Force and Work Groups have been purposefully assembled to include clinicians and researchers with diverse backgrounds and expertise, representing nearly 100 different academic and medical institutions from around the world. Our November 21, 2011, letter to the American Counseling Association provides a more complete listing of the steps we have taken to obtain an independent review of the DSM-5 proposals.

(This can be viewed at: https://dxrevisionwatch.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/apa_letter_to_aca_11-21-11.pdf)

[Ed: URL provided in Dr Oldham’s letter returns 404, substituting file from Dx Revision Watch.]

There is in fact no outside organization that has the capacity to replicate the range of expertise that DSM-5 has assembled over the past decade to review diagnostic criteria for mental disorders. In addition, the posting of the criteria on the www.dsm5.org

Web site for an international review; the ongoing consultation and coordination with the WHO Mental Disorder Advisory Group for ICD-11; and the several internal reviews provided by the Scientific Review Committee, a Clinical and Public Health Committee review, and the Task Force as a whole, collectively provide the most far-reaching review ever undertaken for any DSM revision. However, we recognize that there will not be universal agreement with all of the final decisions made in response to these reviews. As with all scientific classifications applied to clinical practice, research will continue to refine our understanding of these disorders, and revisions to the DSM-5 as a living document will be made after publication of DSM-5 in 2013.

Since there is no “gold standard” for defining mental disorders and many other medical disorders without pathognomonic biological markers, each revision of diagnostic criteria has been seen as the best current set of diagnostic criteria that are meant to be used in clinical practice and tested for their validity. Validity criteria first published by Robins and Guze in 1970 for the Feighner criteria have formed the basic framework for testing the Research Diagnostic Criteria, DSM-III, DSM-III-R, DSM-IV, and the ICD-10. The work groups and the review groups have closely attended to these and an expanded set of validity criteria that are contained in the Guidelines for Making Changes to DSM on the http://www.dsm5.org website: (http://www.dsm5.org/ProgressReports/Documents/Guidelines-for-Making-Changes-to-DSM_1.pdf).

The work groups are accessing more than 30 years of research since the DSM-III was first published in making their recommendations. Some of the proposed changes, such as the inclusion of more dimensional components, have been recommended by members of previous Task Forces and by many participants in the National Institutes of Health-sponsored conference series leading up to the Task Force. We will also have empirical data from our field trials on how these and other proposed changes are working. Final decisions about the revisions will only be made after all of these reviews are completed.

We hope that this additional information is responsive to your members, colleagues, and individuals who use mental health services to clarify that we are undertaking an exceptionally extensive review process involving an international and multidisciplinary clinical and scientific group of experts.

As we continue to refine the proposals for DSM-5 and further progress to development of DSM-5.1 and beyond, we look forward to maintaining an open and ongoing dialogue with your organization, colleagues, and the mental health field at large.

Sincerely,

John M. Oldham, M.D.
President

 

Resources

Coalition for DSM-5 Reform on Dx

Open Letter and iPetition

Coalition for DSM-5 Reform on Twitter    @dsm5reform

Coalition for DSM-5 Reform on Facebook

Coalition for DSM-5 Reform website

This initiative is also being covered on

The Society for Humanistic Psychology Blog

The Society for Humanistic Psychology on Twitter    @HumanisticPsych

The Society for Humanistic Psychology on Facebook